A view from the coffee room… Pokémon vs. Predator

I am a big fan of Pokémon Go. I play it regularly and by that, I mean, every day. The inventiveness of the appearance of Pokémon characters and their witty back stories appeal to me. It is nice to look at a new character and try to find out its real-world counterpart. Further, the structure of the game is to collect as many as possible Pokémon or walking a certain amount of kilometers doing projects within the specified time, perfectly aligning with my competitive personality.

Some time ago I was browsing through the medical literature. I am always trying to keep up with new literature, although nowadays it is very difficult. It has been estimated that medical knowledge doubles in just 73 days ¹. I do really miss those golden old days when you just did a brisk walk to the library to find what you were looking for.

I cannot overestimate my joy when I found out that my favorite leisure time hobby, Pokémon go was employed to expose predator publishers²! Pokémons have helped to reveal that predatory publications have no peer review, nor editing, and what is most choking, not even a reality check². I am not going the reference these publications, since I feel that the journal gets undeserved glory for including them in the reference list. However, I will walk you through some of these genius publications. For the purposes of this article, I also made AI images in the Pokémon go -style.

Predator publishers are the plague of science. They aim for money and money only. Predator publishers don’t give a squat about the basic principle of scientific publication, peer review. It is easy for me to agree with the opinion of Jeffrey Beall that “predatory publishers pose the biggest threat to science since the Inquisition” ³. I sincerely hope that you are aware of the Beall’s list, that was started by him to identify predatory publishers and journals⁴. When the predatory open access thing started it was easy to identify bad journals by simply going to their website. The websites used to be unprofessional looking, full of typos and a lot of colours and different fonts even in the same sentence. That was then. Now, this is harder, as they have evolved. Recent research points to the direction, that although the number of predatory publishers is getting fewer, the number of predatory journals is growing ⁵. This might be due to more organized actions and development of mega-predatory publishers ⁵. 

I want to review some of the articles using Pokémon to detect predatory publishers. Let’s start with economics. PoryGON: a value-added models factor for C2C2B. This article deals with a computer programme for consumer-to-consumer-to-business model PoryGON. Porygon is an artificial Pokémon, made of programming code, thus the use of Porygon in this article seems justified. First author of this article is Dr Akihabara who is the inventor of the Pokémon Transfer System in Matcha City – a truly fictional character from truly fictional city. The article shows quite complex and very colourful computer programming for the PoryGON model. There is one interesting reference, number 2: H Hill. Cybernetic Treatment of Narrow Urethra Associated with Diminished Gluteal Syndrome, Journal of Primeape and Primeape Accessories, 32(5), 2009, 1064-1072. This reference is purely fictional and based on another Pokémon character Primeape. A more thorough look at the reference list reveals that other cited articles are real and existing articles on predatory publishing. For the reviewer, that should have been a wakeup call, but no. This sadly illustrates that peer review was never done. I must though give credit for the genius article title and the journal name. Article title at first glance, looks fitting the tradition of scientific literature. 

Another article on anaesthesia is a little more familiar to us, maybe. Mini review: Sedation and Twilight Anesthesia Induced by Ascofregata Purin Song. Well first, this is really a mini review, hardly one page of text. Jigglypuff, a Pokémon not existing in real world, is said to sing people to sleep. There is a great figure in this review, that shows audiography and brain waves both conscious and unconscious as a response to a Jigglypuff song. References include Harrison G, Starr R, McCartney P, Lennon J (1969) Systematic review on the ability of money to buy love. Revolution 9: 9. Just. Beautiful.

Predatory publishers send emails, or actually it is spam. The style of the spam is usually overly matey and flattering – I hope your day is as positive as you are. One word predatory publishers absolutely love is eminent – to associate with eminent people like you; is pleased to invite eminent authors like you; finding eminent persons like you. I have been called eminent researcher in veterinary medicine, ophthalmology, urology among other disciplines. What does eminent even mean – I mean like deeply. English is not my mother tongue and I suppose it is not for the predatory publishers either. Usually the spam refers to my published article that does not even fit into the category of the journal.

However, there has been a slight shift from this flattery style. Recently these predatory publishers have started to use an emotionally appealing approach. Usually the emotion they are trying to appeal is guilt – We have genuinely emailed you quite a lot of times but received no response, We are confident that you will always be available to help us. And they are always missing one article and need my help – the most recent issue is missing one article, we require your support in releasing our upcoming issue. Finally, my current absolute favourite: If this is on short notice, generously send us a brief essay. I understand that if you get these kinds of emails in your early career, they make you feel great and rub your ego. I’m a hard-boiled academic chick who knows that flattery will get you nowhere.